Apple's intervention can't stop the lawsuits—five more were just filed.

The patent-holding company Lodsys became notorious in 2011. It started sending patent threat letters to small developers asking for a bit more than a half-percent (.575) of their revenue. The company claimed it had a patent on in-app purchases.

Apple intervened in the case shortly thereafter. The company told the court that it had already licensed the Lodsys patents, so they shouldn't be used against developers working on its platform.

It hasn't helped. Lodsys has sued dozens of targets this year, showing it has no compunction about taking on any app maker whether it's a tiny game studio or a global corporation. Late last week, Lodsys fired off its newest round of lawsuits.

It also sued TeamLava, a brand of Storm8 (120 employees), and Halfbrick Studios, the Australian game company that makes FruitNinja.

The complaints are all quite bare-bones and simply say the companies have infringed the 7,620,565 and 7,222,078 patents without any further details. Each complaint names one example app that is alleged to infringe the patents. The lawsuit against Activision, for instance, mentions Rapala Pro Bass Fishing, while the suit against Halfbrick names Age of Zombies.

The '078 and '565 patents are mentioned in many other Lodsys cases. They're part of a group of four patents that the company claims cover a vast array of everyday Internet technologies, from user feedback surveys to online subscription renewals to interactive online advertising.

The five lawsuits were all filed on May 9, following a batch of four filed on April 16. Those lawsuits made similar claims against Caesars Interactive Entertainment, Dow Jones (for its Wall Street Journal app), Evernote, and Glu Mobile. The lawsuits are all filed in the Eastern District of Texas, a popular venue for non-practicing patent holders such as Lodsys.

While Lodsys has generally stopped speaking publicly about its patent campaign, it did publish a blog post on April 16. The company reiterated its stance that Apple's license to its patents "does not extend to independent App Developers."

Wait...Age of Zombies doesn't have any in-app purchases. At least, the Android version doesn't. Why is a game that lacks in-app purchases being mentioned in a lawsuit over patents covering in-app purchases?

They must be getting more confident to start going after the big guys. If they're right, that's scary. Can we hook them up with Judge Wright?

Won't help. Judges can only rule on the law, not change it. In this case, it's the law that needs reworking. Numerous judges have openly asked Congress to reform patent law. As usual, Congress has done nothing.

Wait...Age of Zombies doesn't have any in-app purchases. At least, the Android version doesn't. Why is a game that lacks in-app purchases being mentioned in a lawsuit over patents covering in-app purchases?

Because there are four patents owned by Lodsys that they are swinging around. In reading the linked to lawsuit the two patents are referred to as: '565 "Customer-Based Product Design Module", and '078 "Methods and Systems for Gathering Information from Units of a Commodity Across a Network." -- not in-app purchases.

Our legislative bodies have to realize that software is math and shouldn't be patented.

Or stop granting patents for obvious, ridiculously vague concepts like "the selling of a product online through a website-operated purchase button."

Yeah these are the ones that make me pound my head. I had always thought the purpose of patents was to reward those who discover a way to do something new while at the same time explicitly allowing for others to discover other and potentially superior ways to achieve the same end. Software patents get away with describing their methodology in such a vague manner that were the same standards applied in other fields, any major technological breakthrough would herald a 20 year period of monopoly and stagnation for an entire product class.

If they(whomever they might be) don't get a handle on this behavior, this will do more damage to the internet and cellular services than any government, armed services on the attack or hacker/virusi could ever do. There comes a point in time when people(developers) just say "Argo" when they have no idea when(no if's here, it just a matter of when) they're going to get sued and for how much over something as inconsequential as the tech used as a bludgeoning device mentioned in this article.

I'd love to see some form of binding decision with regards to the Apple case. If Apple licensed the patents for use in their in-app purchase API, and the app developer is using Apple's API and not creating their own mechanism, they should be immune to infringement litigation. Lodsys is already getting their money from Apple, anything more would be double-dipping.

Of course, I don't mean this to be Apple-exclusive. If any of the others (Google, Microsoft, Blackberry) have also licensed it for their APIs, the same should hold true for the app developers in their ecosystems. It's just the Apple case is probably the best-known.

It will never happen, but I'd love to see the scanner trolls sue Lodsys. They must generate some paper as part of their operations suing software developers, right? It's just the kind of crazy scenario that the Prenda insanity has me expecting.

I'd love to see some form of binding decision with regards to the Apple case. If Apple licensed the patents for use in their in-app purchase API, and the app developer is using Apple's API and not creating their own mechanism, they should be immune to infringement litigation. Lodsys is already getting their money from Apple, anything more would be double-dipping.

Of course, I don't mean this to be Apple-exclusive. If any of the others (Google, Microsoft, Blackberry) have also licensed it for their APIs, the same should hold true for the app developers in their ecosystems. It's just the Apple case is probably the best-known.

(edited for clarity)

It will depend on what the actual license agreement with Apple said. Apple thinks the rights pass down to developers, Lodsys thinks the rights do not pass. I hope the minor players are in a position get their cases stayed until the Apple case is resolved. It would probably come at the cost of posting a bond on the revenue due Lodsys if Apple loses.

I'd love to see some form of binding decision with regards to the Apple case. If Apple licensed the patents for use in their in-app purchase API, and the app developer is using Apple's API and not creating their own mechanism, they should be immune to infringement litigation. Lodsys is already getting their money from Apple, anything more would be double-dipping.

Of course, I don't mean this to be Apple-exclusive. If any of the others (Google, Microsoft, Blackberry) have also licensed it for their APIs, the same should hold true for the app developers in their ecosystems. It's just the Apple case is probably the best-known.

(edited for clarity)

It will depend on what the actual license agreement with Apple said. Apple thinks the rights pass down to developers, Lodsys thinks the rights do not pass. I hope the minor players are in a position get their cases stayed until the Apple case is resolved. It would probably come at the cost of posting a bond on the revenue due Lodsys if Apple loses.

It's very close, but I'm going to nitpick a bit here. I don't think that anyone thinks that the developers have any specific rights with regard to the patent. The problem here is a difference of interpretation here between Apple and Lodsys.

Apple believes that it licensed a patent to build a service, the App Store. As the implementor of the patented technology, Apple believes that it can provide the App Store service to its customers - app developers.

Lodsys believes that the App Store is one implementation of the patented technology......and that each app which is developed using the API is also another implementation which must be patented seperately. That's (IMHO) ridiculous.

The old people in congress who don't know jack shit about technology finally dying off and hopefully paving the way for people who know what is going on to step in and put a stop to it.

Sadly the joke that eventually all those supporting these bad laws will eventually die off is just that, a joke, it will never happen, the greedy breed as much as the non greedy and the children of the rich still want to make money for doing nothing.

If anything the only way things will change is if the full structure of the government changes. Nobody is going to refuse bribes if they are legal and are done in a way that makes it look like the recipient is not getting a bribe.

The only way to stop patents is for everyone to put forward multiple things they think of as patents and then sue everyone. Like i can easily come up with a way to wireless transmit video over a wifi connection, and anyone that does it in the future would have to pay me. Just make up a load of nonsense from reading about the subject and anyone can come up with multiple ways to do the same thing. Once they are receiving millions of patent applications a week they will soon realise they have to change things , especially as the mega rich will suddenly have to fork over money to the middle class for their ideas.

Our legislative bodies have to realize that software is math and shouldn't be patented.

Or stop granting patents for obvious, ridiculously vague concepts like "the selling of a product online through a website-operated purchase button."

that required actually spending money to make the patent office not staffed by monkeysas if that is going to happen.

I find this comment offensive. I mean do you really think monkeys wouldn't be able to see the ridiculousness of some of these patents. Blind, comatose monkeys maybe... but your average monkey? I think you owe monkeys an apology.